A writer and a tropical muse. A funky Lubavitcher who enjoys watching the weather, hurricanes, listening to music while enjoying life with a sense of humor and trying to make sense of it all!

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Giving Up the Ghost of Galveston & Selichos

Going to try and to hit on a few things here... and stay on track.. so that I get down the line to where I am going... or want to go before finding a way to go to bed.

And... not get lost along the way.

NHC.. National Hurricane Center makes a "cone" to show where landfall will occur in their best opinon based upon models, professional analysis and what the storm is actually doing.

The cone had Galveston in it.

That is like the lifeguard screaming SHARK on the beach in summer. Everyone must automatically get out of the water.

Many cities were in that cone.. path.. not an ice cream cone but a Probable Path for the Storm.

The media jumped on Galveston, naturally enough, and ran with it. And, it is very possible.. plausible that she could have hit Galveston but less likely when you factor in climo (without the models) and trajectory and a good knowledge of previous storm paths. Very few hurricanes actually hit Galveston; thank God I may add. Either to the west or to the east. Cameron Parish has been hit again and again whereas Galveston gets hit less rare. Brownsville is a Hurricane magnet early in the season. Whatever they were feeding Brownsville and Corpus Christi they did not give to Galveston when it was growing up. That is why Galveston has those old, beautiful houses.. that storm surges did not wash away.

Other cities such as Tampa rarely get hit.. Savannah/Jax..

Why?

Plain old weather.. Either a front comes sweeping down and pulls the storm north into Louisianna or..............the high builds in and it heads for the borderlands. One or the other.

Same in Florida... either a front stalls out to the north of Tampa.. of whoooshhh it zooms through.

Savannah.. Jax? They are well into recurvature and Savannah and Jax are very far west or they get under the high south of the Cape.. Canaveral that is.. Palm Beach and South actually.

Anyway.. on message boards all over the net people began fighting ...breaking off into two camps.

Louisianna... Nola worriesorTexas Storm

No one seemed to want to accept that there is a border between the two and she took that middle road.... very wet ground I may add.

Truth is... if we are playing Truth or Consequences..

I said she would make landfall where she did. I was right. Check my earlier blogs as I am basically writing for myself and the powers that be so.. I know what I said.

I said Beaumont or east... around Sabine River.. those towns that fall between the Texas border and those more well known towns in Louisianna.. further south down the road from Lake Charles and Baton Rouge..east of New Orleans.

Tons of them. Mostly Bayou Country. Cajun Country.

So... she did. It was easy to see on satelite imagery, the water vapor loop and from a look at past history.

But .. the NHC's path and CNN and FOX and... etc... highlighted Galveston and Houston. The big, sexy cities we all know.. more people, bigger story... hoping for another Katrina I guess. Well, not hoping for destruction but TV rating and well... more people... Galveston of course would be a water story.

Funny huh? She was supposed to be a water story and she became a fire story.

As BURNS says... people always want to replay the last storm.He's right... somewhere in ???????Ohio?????????????? anyway..

So...............truth is thankfully Glaveston was spared ...again and Houston has to come back in. Pasadena and Beaumont took a hard hit... all those northern towns just north of Houston where people from low lying places probably took shelter.. as Rita came in from the SE.. SSE REALLY.. she hit the border bayous around the Sabine River and kept going NNW (really) up north of Houston and Beaumont. Port Arthur got lucky just west of the eye.. took less of the storm surge, missed the harsh right side.

Meanwhile tonight on message boards they are still jousting over it.. fighting for who was right. CNN keeps showing footage of Galveston and the fire and the wall. TWC's Dave Schwartz, a man I do not know and do NOT have a relationship with, leads off at midnight with an explanation of how Galveston dodged a bullet but they did take quite a .... and showed footage.

I'm sorry world.. but Cameron Parish and Vermillion Bay are flooding the whole area as wind pushed storm surge is still surging into the area.. and homes that made it through the storm's high winds are now enduring something must worse.. the first major flooding event in well over 50 years.. of this magnitude.

Give up the ghost of Galveston and move on.

Give up the ghost of racism and move on... CNN is doing that story still.

I guess whatever will sell..

Whate else?

I watched The Truman Show tonight.. the whole thing. Something I have never done. Saw a few minutes and would turn it off fast, then on..then off.. better off. Sue me.. I am not the world's biggest Jim Carey fan. Think he is handsome. Liked him in Me, Myself and Irene (a little too tall for the part in my opinon..wrong body shape.. but good) and that Butterflies of the Eternally Messy Mind movie.. He is actually pretty handsome. A capricorn I believe. Figures.

Good movie if you like the gere. EDTV was funnier.. deeper too in ways. A much deeper movie that is overlooked by those able to. You see in the movie.. he was condemned to the life he was leading, not a bad one but not a true one.. until one person who loved him was there to be honest and tell him the truth. Honesty. Her love for Truman was more than her desire to play a role. Even though those playing a role were I hope well paid. And, everyone can be bought off in life.. that is the truth, bought, paid and delivered. They tell you that you are free.. its in your hands, your call but it's bullshit. Because we are all controlled in ways we cannot account for but are being controlled. By our fears... by our insecurities.. by our desires for money.. for nice things.. for acceptance.. outside forces always control us and............. rarely will someone stand up, be honest and follow their heart and not let themselves be controlled.. by money, by fear and by others.

And, the circle.. it goes round and round and the painted poney goes up and down..

Find a person's achilles heel and you won them.. or their weak knee. Knee jerk behavior.. they will take the bait.

Internet lets people fly blind in and out of chat rooms learning everyone's dirty little secrets and allowing them to back on with another name and use something they learned to build a rapport and the nextthing you know.. they are hooked. Hook, line and sinker.

And, if you tell them it's a scam.. they won't believe you. Their pride gets in the way. Ignorance and denial. And, wanting to believe that someone out there with a similar background, similar interest, similar city or similar problem found them.. deep, dark in the middle of the night.

It's scarey. Truly. Except unless someone has a reason to do that do you... the internet is a pretty nice place. Like living in tomorrow land and your world has access to any encyclopedia that exists or will exist someday.

But... it is a door. It can let in goodness and kindness or it can let in evil. It can let in a world of knowledge or.... you can sit mindlessly playing some game online.

Your choice. If you believe in choices or free will.

Had a wonderful Shabbos here.. oddly found an old history book from highschool and college that I thought for sure was lost. Looked and looked and wrote it off. Today it showed up on the bookshelf.. someone found it in their closet behind the Passover dishes and put it on my book case. Voila.. a lost item found.

Wanted it because.. besides being the best history book every written for World Civilization lol.. someone....somewhere is laughing. I wanted to know if a scene I have seen in my mind's eyes was in the book. Some image I cannot forgegt and thought well maybe.. thinking left brain logical.. ws in the old Ferguson and Brun book on the French Revolution and that is where I saw it. Lord knows it goes on and on about the subject. Nope...picture not there.. guess it's from somewhere else.

Margarittaville playing on the CD..

Selichos.

Tonight is Selichos. It is the start of the Jewish Holidays of the High Holidays. New Year when you start it off by looking back and asking God for forgiveness for things you did this year.

I'm not going to shul. Not to that shul. I don't belong there, I don't fit... it no longer resonates with me. I need to find a shul... a temple.. I suppose. And, can do it here..

You keep trying to fit and you don't.. something is wrong.

You keep trying to believe and trying to belive and trying to believe and it hurts to much you try to believe because deep down you know you are screwed and the answer isn't there..

My grandparents got married on Selichos.. my father's parents in the Rabbi's chambers before the service. They were married a long, long, long time and died a year apart in their late 70s.

Genetics would say I have a good 20 years left to love someone.. if someone was here to take a chance on love.

Talk about a dream... and not wanting to give up the ghost of love.. and a normal life.

So... passing this along... from another Shul. One I don't belong to but am on their mailing list.

I guess if I have a shul it's Bnai Zion in Key West. My great-grandparents started it.. late 1800s. Instead of living up the road on Big Coppit Key or Big Pine and I am just a little further up the road.

Looked for libary jobs in Louisianna a few months ago... has hurricanes, southerners, football.. all the requirements I need. Also a lot of colleges. Thought maybe one had a job that would fit. Wrote the local synagogue.. and they put me on their mailing list.

Now... here is a way to start the year... cleaning up after the old one.. doing a mitzvah.. as a ground, as a community... getting ready to start over in the New Year.

Selichos 2005... time to start over and after looking back.. look foward.

Dolphin Game tomorrow... 1pm. You know where I will be.. watching it.

First.. am going to think on ways to ask forgiveness for my mistakes this year and to forgive myself.. for making so many of them. Not being God.. it is a little hard to forgive yourself.. we are just afterall only human.

Subj:Cleaning Day at the ShulDate:9/24/2005 11:59:53 PM Eastern Standard TimeFrom:noreply@bethshalomsynagogue.orgTo:Bobbistorm@aol.comSent from the Internet (Details)Photos of the water damage are on the website.http://www.bethshalomsynagogue.org-Assistance is needed Sunday the 25th at 9:00AM (today) to continue cleaning the Shul and prep the Rayner area.Our day will start at 9:00AM, please bring a shovel and a broom if you have one.If you cannot make it at 9:00 that is ok, I am sure we will be there for a good part of the afternoon.